Archive for February 14, 2006

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Broken Windows

Daniel Jalkut:

In the years since Mac OS X was first released, the basic “Quartz Window” has been increasingly used as the workhorse element in providing the glitzy UI features we take for granted. An average user looking at their desktop, with all Finder windows closed, would answer “none” to the question “how many windows are open?” But there are dozens if not hundreds of windows being displayed in part or full on a typical Mac user’s screen. They just don’t look like windows.…Broken windows occur when the system or a developer attempts to use a (user level) window to achieve a tricky end, without taping up all the loose ends.

One of those loose ends, which he describes, is the way Cocoa handles AppleScript access to windows.